- Joined
- Mar 15, 2019
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This thread is an offtopic continuation of https://mangadex.org/thread/226899
That thread threw up some topics like censorship, cultural gatekeeping, economic and political considerations in the creation of anime and manga, societal and political implications of creative expression etc., so I thought I'd create a new thread to discuss these concepts.
The bulk of my argument is based verbatim on the work of Pier Luigi Sacco and Yuval Noah Harari. To make things simple I'll only refer to only three sources:
- https://archive.org/details/HarariSapiensABriefHistoryOfHumankindRuLitMe456424
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2S2Ro-jmbA
- https://www.wired.com/2007/10/ff-manga/
The starting point is The Cognitive Revolution about 70,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens began to form elaborate structures called cultures. During the Cognitive Revolution new ways of thinking and communicating emerged probably due to genetic mutations that changed the inner wiring of the brains.
Most important was the ability to think and communicate using fictive language i.e. about things that don't physically exist. The immense diversity of imagined realities that Sapiens invented, and the resulting diversity of behaviour patterns, never ceased to change and develop.
So at this starting point of Culture 0.0, Sapiens lived in small hunter gatherer bands and any creative expression was directly transmitted to other members of the group. There was no concept of 'artist' as everyone was engaged in 'grassroots' creative expression and the audience was whoever was nearby. Of course some ideas were more popular or successful and spread, while others simply died out. In time through a process of sharing and innovation certain groups accumulated the culture and technology required to kickstart the next phase: The Agricultural Revolution.
The Agricultural Revolution led to the emergence of larger, more complex societies which had huge wealth and power disparity. This meant designated societal roles including creative professions like artisans and performers but still no 'artists'. There was also a new driving force for creative expression: the whims of elites. These elites eventually directed some of their resources towards production of creative products based solely on their individual discretion completing the transition to Culture 1.0: the patron and the artist.
In Culture 1.x, culture becomes formally defined with the artist as an independent figure and claims to the right of authorship. The technology does not exist for mass replication so culture is economically non-productive but the patron gets political and social benefits. With the French revolution the State becomes the patron and 'experts' (critics) become the gatekeepers of funding leading to high and low culture. Audiences expand but are still limited to the bourgeois however urban markets begin to emerge.
With the Industrial Revolution new technologies enable mass replication and Culture 2.0: profit driven cultural industries. The mass marketability becomes the arbiter of what culture is produced and copyright becomes entrenched. The drive for mass appeal leads to counter-cultures but the industry deals with this by creating conglomerate monopolies and co-opting sub-cultures to be sold back to the rebels.
With the birth of the internet, content communities and fandoms become more immersive and collaborative, established distribution channels can be bypassed to reach audiences, copyright becomes difficult to enforce, easy access to digital tools blurs the distinction between creative producers and consumers, micro-patronage is feasible, non-profit content creation is viable etc.
The present moment is one of transition to Culture 3.x where instead of cultural industries being a part of the economy, all of society and the economy is part of the cultural sphere - almost like it was at the start with Culture 0.0:
Culture is no longer just entertainment. Our understanding of things, our attributions of meaning to everything, from products to experiences, has an extremely strong cultural basis and this is dramatically escalating.
tl;dr Watch the first 26 minutes of the Youtube video
So how does all this relate to Manga? Well the manga industry was an early pioneer of this transition. The dojinishi ecosystem in Japan meant that the copyright trap was dealt with before mass internet coverage, manga and (its moving derivative) anime are ubiquitous in Japanese society & economy, all creative industries in Japan are tied to or originate from manga, they are well suited to universal visual emotional communication (hence their extensive use in memes) and in the process of their international spread they have well established and diverse content communities.
All this means both opportunities and challenges. As this is a transition there are no hard and fast rules or norms in place, and it seems likely that a feature of Culture 3.x will be constant flux. Given rapid technological innovation in other fields, societal change is inevitable (for better or worse) and this is likely to be mediated through the new cultural paradigm - the 'culture wars' are an early sign of this. There is also the concentration of power with digital platforms - especially (corporate and/or state) monopoly digital platforms.
On a more sobering note, remember that the previous transition was accompanied by the rise of Fascist regimes which utilised industrially mass produced creative content to genocidal ends. The current misinformation and polarisation crisis is largely a consequence of algorithmically mass produced and targeted content.
That thread threw up some topics like censorship, cultural gatekeeping, economic and political considerations in the creation of anime and manga, societal and political implications of creative expression etc., so I thought I'd create a new thread to discuss these concepts.
The bulk of my argument is based verbatim on the work of Pier Luigi Sacco and Yuval Noah Harari. To make things simple I'll only refer to only three sources:
- https://archive.org/details/HarariSapiensABriefHistoryOfHumankindRuLitMe456424
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2S2Ro-jmbA
- https://www.wired.com/2007/10/ff-manga/
The starting point is The Cognitive Revolution about 70,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens began to form elaborate structures called cultures. During the Cognitive Revolution new ways of thinking and communicating emerged probably due to genetic mutations that changed the inner wiring of the brains.
Most important was the ability to think and communicate using fictive language i.e. about things that don't physically exist. The immense diversity of imagined realities that Sapiens invented, and the resulting diversity of behaviour patterns, never ceased to change and develop.
So at this starting point of Culture 0.0, Sapiens lived in small hunter gatherer bands and any creative expression was directly transmitted to other members of the group. There was no concept of 'artist' as everyone was engaged in 'grassroots' creative expression and the audience was whoever was nearby. Of course some ideas were more popular or successful and spread, while others simply died out. In time through a process of sharing and innovation certain groups accumulated the culture and technology required to kickstart the next phase: The Agricultural Revolution.
The Agricultural Revolution led to the emergence of larger, more complex societies which had huge wealth and power disparity. This meant designated societal roles including creative professions like artisans and performers but still no 'artists'. There was also a new driving force for creative expression: the whims of elites. These elites eventually directed some of their resources towards production of creative products based solely on their individual discretion completing the transition to Culture 1.0: the patron and the artist.
In Culture 1.x, culture becomes formally defined with the artist as an independent figure and claims to the right of authorship. The technology does not exist for mass replication so culture is economically non-productive but the patron gets political and social benefits. With the French revolution the State becomes the patron and 'experts' (critics) become the gatekeepers of funding leading to high and low culture. Audiences expand but are still limited to the bourgeois however urban markets begin to emerge.
With the Industrial Revolution new technologies enable mass replication and Culture 2.0: profit driven cultural industries. The mass marketability becomes the arbiter of what culture is produced and copyright becomes entrenched. The drive for mass appeal leads to counter-cultures but the industry deals with this by creating conglomerate monopolies and co-opting sub-cultures to be sold back to the rebels.
With the birth of the internet, content communities and fandoms become more immersive and collaborative, established distribution channels can be bypassed to reach audiences, copyright becomes difficult to enforce, easy access to digital tools blurs the distinction between creative producers and consumers, micro-patronage is feasible, non-profit content creation is viable etc.
The present moment is one of transition to Culture 3.x where instead of cultural industries being a part of the economy, all of society and the economy is part of the cultural sphere - almost like it was at the start with Culture 0.0:
Culture is no longer just entertainment. Our understanding of things, our attributions of meaning to everything, from products to experiences, has an extremely strong cultural basis and this is dramatically escalating.
tl;dr Watch the first 26 minutes of the Youtube video
So how does all this relate to Manga? Well the manga industry was an early pioneer of this transition. The dojinishi ecosystem in Japan meant that the copyright trap was dealt with before mass internet coverage, manga and (its moving derivative) anime are ubiquitous in Japanese society & economy, all creative industries in Japan are tied to or originate from manga, they are well suited to universal visual emotional communication (hence their extensive use in memes) and in the process of their international spread they have well established and diverse content communities.
All this means both opportunities and challenges. As this is a transition there are no hard and fast rules or norms in place, and it seems likely that a feature of Culture 3.x will be constant flux. Given rapid technological innovation in other fields, societal change is inevitable (for better or worse) and this is likely to be mediated through the new cultural paradigm - the 'culture wars' are an early sign of this. There is also the concentration of power with digital platforms - especially (corporate and/or state) monopoly digital platforms.
On a more sobering note, remember that the previous transition was accompanied by the rise of Fascist regimes which utilised industrially mass produced creative content to genocidal ends. The current misinformation and polarisation crisis is largely a consequence of algorithmically mass produced and targeted content.
